ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game

I had my eye on this one, back when it was in early access. It looks like a Russian version of the original FOs or Wasteland even.

However I remember seeing many negative reviews on Steam, and I've been wary ever since. People claim it has too many bugs, and game breaking stuff which obscure what otherwise is a very nice game.

I've bought this on GOG and it's a bit rough round the edges but playable enough. Yeah the English translation is not it's strong point but most of the time you can figure out what is meant. Apparently they're working on some DLC which is a good sign. There are still some outstanding bugs like some items not working as intended but I haven't come across anything game braking.

They have just enhanced the game. Look at the changelog of the newer 1.08 version!

To answer your initial question, yes.  The gameplay is isometric, but the camera is free-spinning and you can zoom, so it's a bit "old-school" but with modern precision.  Your character's appearance is based on the portrait you pick, but it's really easy to restart if you picked a portrait you liked but the hair is the wrong color.

The gameplay is free-roaming regarding exploration, but combat becomes a turn-based affair.  It's a lot of clicking, but I found it intuitive.  The tutorial is very helpful here, especially since you start in the tutorial area.

As far as story goes, I've only made it to the first area, but it's already subverted my initial expectations.  Without spoiling anything, there's room for heartwarming, cleverness, and outright betrayal, and the obvious culprit (if there is one) may be innocent... or not.

The graphics settings are easy to adjust, and you can even tweak the size of the UI to your liking.  My native resolution is 2560x1440 at 120 refresh, but it supports just about any screen size you want, with at least five levels of detail running from "Best Performance" to "Fantastic"

I will admit that since the game is in native Russian, some of the English translation is a bit iffy, but I have not seen any dialogue or exposition that was rendered incomprehensible because of it.
But I would also argue that that is part of the appeal.  The game takes place 20 years in the future, after the bombings, specifically, 2005.  Yes, this is a story where the Cold War went reaaaal hot, reaaaal fast.
On top of that, some of the people you meet are still die-hard Communists, so it's interesting to see a post-Soviet, post-apocalyptic world.  All of the Fallout games I've played took place in the United States, so you often had some sort of patriotic or semi-patriotic (both good and bad) group, but here you can find a guy who used to be (as he claims) part of the Inner Circle, except he has next to no power.

So from a lore-perspective, there's a lot there if you know anything about real-world history, and you have to be willing to talk to people.  You can just start attacking everything in sight, but that's on you.

TL;DR - This is not a "fast" game, and that is a very good thing.  I have not made it far in the game (real life stuff) but I have found exploration rewarding and dialogue engaging.  The controls take a minute to get used to but the system works very well for this game.  It does not require insane hardware to run, but can accommodate gaming machines' extra power and processing.  Unique premise, made with love, you can tell that they did their very best to put out a quality product.

Sooo, I've finally bought the game during the current GOG sale and... boy, it's frustratingly unbalanced and unfair so far.
And then I checked out every location on the way to the big city where I arrived sick and still more or less broke after 10 hours...

All the tips for making money involve skill levels I don't possess since progression is ridiculously slow unless you grind random encounters. Since combat is extremely boring I'd rather not...

I could sum up my experience so far as: [Skill check failed] and [Target missed]. My character started out as a Child Prodigy / Morphine Doctor combination. I foolishly asusmed that like in Fallout and many other RPGs, I could build a speech and barter focused character who avoids combat.

That's NOT working out so far. I fail most speech checks even at speech level 70 (putting most of my precious level-up points into it)! Asking for discounts always fails. Getting peopel to trust me to help them fails... So I suck at talking to people AND combat. I'm currently level 5.
The only things I can kill are small critters. Most human enemies with guns one shot kill me. I wasted an hour (!) yesterday trying to kill a giant rat in the sewers with my first companion. We both had a gun but missed half of our shots AND got one hit mauled to death by the thing. WTF...
Of course I'm not wearing any armor because I cannot afford it. I have 600 rubles now which seems like a small forture to me but sadly even the most ordinary leather armor costs 1000+ rubles. I have no crafting recipe for armor yet. And the ONE instance where a merchant sold one it was about 10 times as much money as I had on me...

Eventually I managed to kill the giant rat. My companion died however. Turns out there was NO loot, only a note, in the rat den anyway..... RELOAD and back out.

The entire game is such a poorly designed save scumming experience. The fact that lockpicking anything requires 5-20 retries makes me want to scream. I want to craft bullets? Better save because chances are it fails and your precious materials get destroyed....

AHHHHHHHH

Gotta say, I had no interest in this game and now after reading your adventures in it, I have even less interest. But I enjoyed laughing at the gameplay description.

It's going better now!
I looked up some gun recipes online because buying them all would mean going broke again. I also got some armor now.

This way I survived my first major bandit ambush and got some loot! Wooh!
But any big critter is still impossible at level 5. So I cannot clear the future base location. But just as well since I have no idea how I'm supposed to get 20.000 for all the upgrades. Took me 15h to get 2000 together. :/

Do people just grind bandit attacks or how the hell do I make money???
Junk sells for so little it just pays for my food.
Carry weight is also quite low for me. Around 60. Even with Fidel as a pack mule I couldn't even loot the bandits completely...
Can I have more than one companion? And if so, where are the others?

Some quests I cannot progress the way I want because my speech checks still fail (like reasoning with the moonshiners to accept the protection deal).

I don't mind slower games but the gameplay itself is quite unappealing. I like the world and the people. I like the fun stuff like participating in a porn film. Lol!

But progression is so slow it's agonizing.

IIRC I mostly made money selling weapons, and later on it was much harder to find a shop or a caravan that would buy them off me, because they all have limited resources and reset every week or so. Just do some quests for now, you'll get money and exp from those. 

There are more companions, here's a guide how to get them (some minor spoilers obviously): atom-rpg.fandom.com/wiki/Companions

Dog is rather useless anyway, can't carry much and doesn't do well fighting.

IIRC I cleared Red Fighter when I had some long distance weapon on my main character, some rifle I think (and plenty of ammo). Don't remember how I got it though, maybe i defeated a small group of bandits and one of them had it, found it somewhere or just bought it off some caravan. Definitely don't buy (or sell) your weapons from the arms dealer in the city, at least not the basic ones. He has the worst prices.

This might be useful 
steamcommunity.com/app/552620/discussions/1/1646544348830510815/

So, I'm still playing!

I'm level 14 now. Swimming in cash. Base is fully upgraded. I now have 3 active companions and the slave girl for her inventory space.

I used the respecc potion yesterday. When I created my character I somehow missed that I could lower the base stats. That struck me as odd but for some reason I didn't realize it was mapped to the X button. So I didn't have a dump stat. *facepalm*

So glad about the do-over. Made luck my dump stat and boosted my dexterity at last!
I can now use automatic weapons. Yes!

Now that I have dealt with all Death members I received a unique helmet with +1 strength. Which is perfect because I have a pistol that needs 7. I was saving one stat point unsure about blowing it on that one weapon. Now I don't behave to. Perfect!

I spent a pretty penny on a bullet proof vest that doesn't behave the dexterity penalty and is almost as good as the cuirass.
I'm still looking for a 100% gas mask. I only managed to acquire a 50% one. Then again I only learned yesterday that popping two rad pills makes you imumune. How bizarre. I didn't realize that stuff stacked...

That got me through the Death Tunnel. But the monsters in there took me a lot of reloading to kill before they killed a companion. Once I almost had it and then one companion killed another one by friendly fire. GODDAMN IT!

Fights against humans are still randomly unfair. Sometimes they all have grenades and after the third that deals 30 damage, everyone is dead before I can even make a move. WTF.

Looks like enemies scale with you. If I get better guns, the enemies have better gear too. I think they also scale with your party size which is smart.

I've been to the Mountain Pass. Next thing to do is go to the Dead City, I believe.

Btw, so repairing the car is for nothing? What exactly was the point of that other than getting a tragic scene?
I assumed this would be my fast travel option at last. Do I really have to buy one for a lot of money??

Just finished the game!
Took me more than 100 hours! I spent 50% of that time managing my inventory, I think...
Only to end up with 63.000 rubles and no opportunity to spend it!
I thought I could at least buy a car. But nope! I missed the only opportunity to get one when I did the corresponding quest with a speech check to got me the statue peacefully without the mutants leaving. Because I didn't know about the car and had no reason to make them leave...

The optional last battle is so ridiculously hard, I couldn't pull it off. I was level 17, drugged up and still got killed on the first round every single time by the enemy's OP weapons. Not even the best grenades managed to kill a single enemy on my turn... The balancing in this game is a joke.

I failed the speech check with 154!!!! WTF?!?
I failed the strength check with 10. WTF?!?

I was ready to give up on seeing the ending and be royally pissed when I tried the intellect check again and picked the ONE combination I hadn't tried before and that was the one that got me through the encounter unharmed!

I tried 3 variations of the ending and each time the big city was fucked. But everyone else was doing fine. Except that one of my choices with a gang got Fidel killed years later. Fuck. I guess overall it counts as a good ending though.
I also checked the ATOM ending and the creepy ending. That went as expected...

I'm a bit disappointed that the epilogue doesn't reach far enough into the future to tell whether or not the doomsday prophecy was true. And I wish the epilogue also included more minor choices like the mutant circus. The ending is only about the factions and companions.

That said, I'm OK with the ending. The main story is super short but not bad. I like the idea of it, it's just a shame that there is so little story there. It had a lot of potential for more than just visiting 3 bunkers...

I know that the game's strength lies in the side quests and world building. Same could be said for Fallout. I'll even say that Atom RPG has a better story than FO3. Or a better rough plot in any case since the story is so short.

I still think the game is poorly balanced and downright unfair at times. But despite that I had a blast with this world and its characters. And I didn't encounter a single quest bug or any other bug aside from getting trapped after a conversation and not always being able to break freak again by latching onto a new target. But since this game is build around save scumming, reloading a save once or twice wasn't a big deal.

I recommend this game to patient RPG fans who don't mind extremely slow progression and never reaching the point where your character becomes OP. Some might even consider this a plus.

I'm tempted to try Wasteland 2 now but I'm worried I'll struggle even more with that one...